


The Beginning

by sellyoursoulforagoodname



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Let's all run away from the empire before we die!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26366605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sellyoursoulforagoodname/pseuds/sellyoursoulforagoodname
Summary: Maul's been keeping an eye on the Emperor's comings and goings for quite some time. He knew about the 'son' the man had in secret. Things are changing, though, and he isn't sure why.
Kudos: 10
Collections: Blasterbolts and Butterfly wings AU





	The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> As you can probably judge from the title, this was the first chapter to our little pet project, so this sets up the shenanigans. Not much of anybody but Maul, but that'll come later.

Something was wrong.

Something was seriously wrong, and he had known it for years, and it was driving him crazy that he’d made  _ absolutely no progress _ in figuring out what it was.

It all started a years ago, a few years after the oh-so-glorious Empire had been created; his former master’s master plan that he’d never been privy to past whatever his current mission had been. (The creation of said Empire had been a ripple the size of a tsunami in the Force that’d knocked him completely off his feet when he felt it.) This feeling wasn’t as full-tilt jarring that the other had been, but it filled every part of Maul with a sense of  _ wrongness _ that made him feel sick to his stomach in a way he hadn’t since he was a child.

Then, years later, there was a  _ second _ wave of  _ wrong _ through the Force.

And he still had no clue what had caused it.

That is, he had no clue what caused it until he finally,  _ finally _ hit a break in his search. A break that was solely because the one around which the feeling circled finally made a decision.

The search had become a pet project of Maul’s, slicing into Imperial databanks to keep tabs on their comings and goings. Despite everything else he had his fingers in, he always found himself circling back around to it whenever he couldn’t sleep at night. On one such night, he found traces of a ship leaving an Imperial base, but there wasn’t a flight plan on record. It wasn’t too much of a reach to figure out that someone was fleeing the Empire. Now, that in and of itself wouldn’t have been too strange; he’d seen many similar situations over the years. It was the fact that this one was coming from a place Maul knew the Emperor frequented.

That fact made it odd enough that he was quickly boarding his own ship, a vessel reminiscent of the  _ Scimitar _ , to follow the telltale trail left behind by the other.

It wasn’t long before he tracked the ship to a planet well known as the place to go for those that didn’t want to be found, and from there it was an easy feat to use the Force to track the traces left by the passengers. It was less than an hour later that he laid eyes on them. He was at a distance, lurking in the shadows, but he could just make out a man’s face under one of the cloaks.

Abruptly, the sense of wrongness made sense. Maul could feel it now that he was this close to the man. Palpatine had a son. It was clear in the way the dark side coiled around him.

Pushing past the initial revulsion at the concept of  _ how _ that son came into being, Maul supposed it made sense. Of course, something as monumental as a--no,  _ the _ Sith Lord having a child would shake his former apprentice’s perception of the Force. It lifted a weight from his shoulders, finally having that particular mystery solved.

There was a rage that filled him at the sight of the man, though. The Emperor took him, turned him into a weapon, then abandoned him. Yet somewhere down the lines saw fit to have a child that, be the conception by choice or accident, he left alive. That replacement rubbed at Maul harder than any other insult. Never before or since Maul had Sidious taken a child into his ‘care’, yet here was proof that that was a false statement. The existence of this man, coupled with the fact that he’d been in a location that was important to the Emperor, implied that Sidious expected him to be his successor, and Maul impulsively wanted nothing more than to murder him if only to snub his former mentor.

But he was smarter than that. There had to be more of a reason for this man to exist. Perhaps Maul could use him to his advantage? Some sort of blackmail or other such threat? But the man chose to leave his father’s protection secretly; there had to be a reason for that.

Maul didn’t find that he particularly cared to know whatever that reason might have been as he watched the man and his companion mill about, seemingly looking for someone specific. But why leave after all this time? Nothing had truly challenged the Empire in the years since that first wave through the Force. The Rebellion still existed and proved to be nothing more than a nuisance. Most planets remained firmly under the durasteel grip of the Empire. The Outer Rim was mostly outside of his control, but there wasn’t anything worthwhile out there to be considered important by the Emperor, and the Hutts did not go out of their way to cross him. On the galactic scale, nothing warranted this sudden betrayal.

So, the real question was why did the man choose to leave  _ now? _


End file.
